How Dark Social Impacts B2B Marketing
In a perfect world, every B2B company would have the opportunity to market their products and services directly to their target audience at any given moment. Unfortunately, we don’t live in this perfect world.
Thanks to the prevalence of social media and other digital marketing channels, it feels as though everyone is constantly being bombarded with advertisements from brands at every corner. However, that doesn’t mean that B2B marketing has become any less challenging.
In fact, thanks to what marketers have come to refer to as “dark social” (more on that later), many B2B marketers are facing renewed challenges when it comes to effectively reaching their target audience online.
For those who aren’t quite familiar with the concept of dark social and its impact on B2B marketing, below you will find an introduction to this somewhat hidden side of social media marketing…
What is Dark Social?
Dark social refers to all of the social media interactions (e.g. likes, comments, shares, retweets, reposts) that occur outside of a user’s designated social media app. Since these social interactions take place behind the scenes, they are often missed by most social media monitoring and analytics software. As a result, many marketers have no way of knowing that these interactions have even taken place.
While this might sound like an inconsequential issue, when you consider the sheer volume of these “dark” social interactions taking place every day, it becomes clear that this is a significant issue for B2B marketers. In fact, a 2016 study from Forrester found that more than half of all social media interactions are taking place off the grid.
And, when you consider that B2B marketing mainly takes place on social media, this could be a significant problem for B2B companies.
Why Is Dark Social a Problem for B2B Marketers?
As the above section makes clear, dark social has the potential to undermine almost any B2B marketing campaign. That being said, its impact is most noticeable when it comes to social media marketing. After all, this is where most of these “dark’ social interactions are taking place.
Because B2B marketers are primarily using social media to drive engagement and build relationships with potential customers, the “missing” interactions that make up dark social have the potential to seriously undermine these efforts. And, when you consider that most B2B marketers are struggling with generating enough leads and sales to begin with, any additional challenge could prove to be too much for many businesses to overcome.
The most significant impact comes when marketers are required to measure the ROI of each marketing activity. If there’s no measurable return from an activity management often cuts the budget. Just because we cannot measure the impact, doesn’t mean it’s not having a significant influence on buyers, learning, discovering, informing their choices to reach out to sales.
How to Measure Dark Social Impact for B2B Marketing?
As mentioned above, most social media analytics software does not include data on the “dark” social interactions taking place. As such, B2B marketers can track the overall social media performance of their campaign using one of two methods:
Use an external “dark social” tracking tool — The most reliable way to measure the impact of dark social is to use an external tool that is specifically designed to track these “hidden” social media interactions.
In most cases, these tools will also provide you with ways to quantify the impact of each of these interactions by tracking things like: -
The number of times your content is liked or shared
The number of times your content is commented on or reposted
The number of times your content is clicked on
Use an internal social media analytics tool — If you currently use an internal social media analytics tool to track your marketing campaigns, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to track the dark social interactions taking place as well. In order to do so, you will need to make sure that you have the right tracking enabled within your analytics software. Otherwise, you will miss out on this critical data and be unable to accurately assess the success of your campaign.
Tracking dark social is one thing, attributing those interactions to a lead is much harder. So it’s easier to measure activity, these vanity metrics which tell you whether your content is resonating. But harder to connect that buyer interest or intent with sales meeting requests.
How to Combat the Negative Impact of Dark Social Media?
As with any challenge that marketers face, the best place to start is by understanding the enemy. In the case of dark social, there are three main reasons why these “hidden” social media interactions are having a negative impact on your B2B marketing campaign.
Poor social media content — The most common reason for this is because your content just isn’t that good. It doesn’t resonate with your audience and thus doesn’t get shared or liked. To combat this, you need to make sure that your social media posts are as engaging as possible.
Poor social media targeting — The second most common reason for poor engagement on your posts is because you aren’t engaging the right people. In other words, your social media posts are either reaching the wrong people or the right people aren’t seeing them. To combat this, you need to make sure that your social media posts are being targeted at the right people.
Too much competition — Finally, one of the reasons why your engagement rates may be low is because there is too much competition. In other words, there are just too many posts on social media for anyone to notice yours. To combat this, you need to find ways to make your posts stand out from the crowd.
3 Ways Dark Social Helps B2B Marketing
While the challenges posed by social media “dark” are numerous, there are still plenty of ways in which it can actually help B2B marketers.
Here are the main ways in which dark social helps B2B marketers.
Boosts engagement — As we’ve already discussed, dark social boosts engagement. This means that posts that are “liked” or “retweeted” but missed by analytics tools will help boost your engagement rate.
Boosts your reach — Furthermore, dark social boosts your reach. This means that posts that are “liked” or “retweeted” but again missed by analytics tools will be seen by more people.
Improves SEO — Finally, dark social also has the potential to improve your SEO. This is because posts that are “liked” or “retweeted” but missed by analytics tools can help improve your overall rankings.
Bottom line
Dark social has emerged as one of the most significant challenges facing modern B2B marketers.
For many companies, it has actually become more challenging to reach their target audience using social media than it was a few years ago.
While this may seem like an insurmountable challenge, with the right approach, B2B marketers can overcome it and continue to use social media as a vital channel for lead generation and sales.
